Who’s That Girl?

by Celia Hayes

  “Al, no, wait… wait, what are you doing?”

  “‘Yes, yes, again,’” he continues in that silly voice. “‘Spank me. I love it when you spank me!’”

  “Al, will you please cut it out?” I beg, before we fall onto the cushions, only narrowly missing the table.

  “Can you stop killing my buzz?” he says, putting one hand into my hair and pointing to the couch with the other. “Look, it’s calling out to us – resistance is futile!” He kisses my shoulder.

  “Al, listen, I…” I begin, but he is deaf to my protests and his lips go from my neck to behind my ear. “Al…” I gradually start to lose touch with reality, while his lips cover every single part of my face. My eyes. My cheeks.

  “You smell delicious,” he murmurs breathlessly, taking me gently by the waist.

  “Al…”

  “Shhh,” he whispers, and presses his mouth against mine, closing his eyes. I close mine too for a moment, and then I remember everything: the phone call, The Chronicle, Curvy, Dave and…

  “Al, hang on. No, I’m serious.” I push him off with both hands.

  “What’s the matter?” he asks, not releasing me.

  “We can’t.”

  “Why not? There’s no one around? Do you want me to close the door?”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “What is it then?”

  “I have to go.”

  “What do you mean? Come on, you can’t go. We have to celebrate, you promised me,” he reminds me, a disappointed look on his face.

  The champagne, his suite… why am I so stupid? Why?

  “I know, you’re right,” I admit with a sigh, groping for the right words. “But I didn’t imagine…”

  “You didn’t imagine what?”

  And now comes the difficult part. “They called me from work.”

  “From work? Have you seen what time it is?”

  “Yeah, but there was something that… something I said that I’d handle. I can’t back out now.”

  Al puts his hands in his pockets. He looks really miserable.

  “I’m sorry, Al, I really am.”

  “No, don’t worry about it. If you have to work…”

  “I promise you, another time…”

  “Sure, another time…”

  He goes over to the door and glances back at me. “Okay, listen, you get changed and I’ll go and get the car.”

  “Why? You just got here.”

  “I haven’t got anything else to do, I’ll give you a lift.”

  “Al, you don’t need to do that.”

  “I’d like to,” he says, and he sounds sincere. “And anyway, I don’t want you wandering around on your own at this time of night.”

  “But it’s a long way and you must be exhausted,” I insist. I insist a bit too much, maybe, because he seems to smell a rat. He walks back over to me and gives me a preoccupied look. I know what he’s thinking and I know it’ll only take him a moment to work out what’s really going on.

  “Where do you have to go?”

  “I told you, I have to work.”

  “Yes, but where?”

  “I…”

  “I get it,” he murmurs laconically.

  “Al…” I say, stopping him before he goes back to the door.

  “So is that how it works? He ignores you, hardly remembers your name, and then when he needs something he picks up the phone in the knowledge that whatever time of day or night it is, whatever you’re doing, you’ll drop it all and run to him. Is that right? Is that what you want? Is that how you want to be treated?” he asks me angrily, looking disappointed. And I don’t know how to answer, because I know that he’s totally right.

  “Look, it’s not what you think.” I’m on the verge of crying and I can feel a knot in my throat, and I don’t know if it’s because I’ve hurt him without meaning to or that he’s reminded me that Dave will never want me. “Believe me, it’s not… it’s not like that.”

  “No? Then call him,” he challenges me. “Pick up the phone and tell him: I’m sorry, tonight I’m busy.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “Tell him: tonight I have to go out because I have just got through the first round of one of the most important beauty competitions in the country thanks to my abilities and I want to celebrate with Al, the guy you saw me with the other day.” He’s angry now. “The idiot who just travelled two hundred and fifty miles to see me. Who spent all day thinking about the mole on my neck and who just wanted to hold me tight for a few minutes on that horrible red couch,” he confesses, almost shouting.

  “Al…” I say his name in a whisper, my eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t mean to, really…”

  When he notices the state I’m in, he calms down right away. His anger vanishes and all that is left is an infinite sadness. “No, you don’t have to justify yourself. You warned me about all this,” he says, putting his hands back in his pockets. “I’m the stupid one for hoping things would go differently.” And we stand there next to each other without knowing where to look, without knowing what else to say. “What a disaster,” I hear him murmur, as he raises a hand and dries my face with his fingers. “Come on, get yourself ready. I’ll wait for you in the car.”

  “You don’t have to take me there, I can take a taxi, really.”

  “Hurry up, Sam, or you’ll be late,” he says, and walks out of the room, leaving me alone with an unopened bottle of champagne.

  At the end of the day, it’s what I deserve. Loneliness and alcohol.

  *

  “Is it here?”

  I stick my head out of the window but I can’t see anything I recognise except a small newspaper kiosk – the same small newspaper kiosk we drove past not even two minutes ago.

  “We have already been here, where are we going wrong?” I groan. “He said to take the third street.”

  “It must be this one. There’s the florist there, at the corner of the bank,” says Al as he looks around.

  “So where’s number twenty-two? This is sixty-four,” I say, pointing to a nearby front door.

  “On the other side. You just have to cross the road.”

  It takes me a while but in the end I find it. It’s a very smart, well looked after two storey townhouse, just like all the other buildings in Nob Hill. I look up at it and I wonder what Dave is doing right now.

  “Okay, I’ll be going, then,” I say, summoning up my courage. “Thanks for the lift, Al.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “What are you going to do now? Are you going back to the Ritz?”

  “Nah…” he answers indifferently. “The night is young. I might call a couple of friends and go and get a few drinks. Hook up with a stripper in a club…” But he doesn’t seem to believe it himself, so I certainly don’t – I don’t need any more encouragement to feel like the horrible person I actually am.

  “Okay, well, have fun.” I get out of the car.

  “Sam…” he says, grabbing my arm.

  “What?”

  “Don’t go.”

  “I…”

  He lets go. “Okay, forget it. Pretend I never said anything.”

  And our paths split: he returns to his world and I to mine. The one where I’m nobody and chase unrealisable dreams whilst standing outside a building I’ve never seen before. Those classic moments when you think that, in the unlikely event of a piano falling on your head, at the end of the day you probably deserve it.

  Chapter 19

  Accidental Interference

  “Come in, this way.”

  I find Dave waiting for me by the door. He’s wearing jogging bottoms and a hoodie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him dressed like this before. He’s always so formal, so attentive to every detail. It’s strange to see him in his apartment with messy hair and not even the shadow of a tie.

  “Take a seat wherever you want,” he says, gesturing to the living room and walking in front of me. “Please ignore the mess,” he adds,
picking up a wine glass from a coffee table. “I’m making some minor modifications to the decor.”

  “No problem.”

  I walk over, take off my jacket and sit myself down on the couch. I didn’t have anything to change into in the dressing room, so I had to choose between the stuff for the pageant and the clothes I was wearing this morning. As a result, I have made my entrance into Dave’s house wearing only a pink dress that doesn’t even come down to my knees and shows off my shoulders. It’s very low-cut too, and I still have the hairdo they gave me for the photo shoot I endured with an embarrassed expression. So what, you’re asking? So it looks like I did it on purpose is what – it looks like I got dressed up like this just for him.

  Embarrassing, right? He’ll think that I’m trying to hit on him or, even worse, that I’m trying to hit on him without realising just how terribly ridiculous I am.

  “You weren’t dressed like that this morning,” he comments, watching me carefully.

  I squirm.

  “Ah, this? Err, no, you’re right. No, no. I absolutely wasn’t, no,” I say, fiddling with my cuff.

  “Were you on your way out?” he asks, surprised by the discovery that I might actually have something else to do apart from toil away at The Chronicle.

  “No,” I say, but then I think for a moment and I realise that it would be perfect. At least it would explain the dress, the make-up and especially the heels. “I mean, yes,” I correct myself.

  “Errr….” He looks confused, but for the time being decides not to go into it. “Did you bring your computer?” he says, changing the subject and coming to sit down next to me.

  “I’ll get it out right away,” I say, taking the opportunity to put some distance between us. I play for time, opening my bag and taking out my laptop, and in the meantime I look around for something to lean on, because I know that I won’t be able to handle two hours sitting on the couch next to him. I spot an armchair next to the bar. Discreet, far away, sheltered behind the table. I set off in that direction, ready to breathe a sigh of relief, but Dave’s voice pipes up, condemning me to emotional incontinence for the rest of the evening.

  “Come and sit over here – I won’t be able to see anything if you’re over there.”

  “No, it’s fine here. Look.” I start up my computer. “You can see perfectly from there.”

  “Sam… come over here.” I can’t argue, so I look at the floor and shuffle back over to the couch, sitting as far away as possible so as to minimise any possible contact. I realise that it’s a bit over the top and I know that he can’t not have noticed. We are just colleagues and we are here to work, and so the obstinacy with which I try to keep my distance from him is absolutely ludicrous. He’ll think I’m crazy and from the way he’s looking at me, I get the feeling he hasn’t taken it particularly well, but he can’t insist. It’s already pretty unusual that he’s invited me to his house. To avoid being misunderstood, he’ll just have to put up with it, so he sighs and watches what I’m doing on the screen on my PC from a ridiculous distance.

  “Shall we start with the interviews? Have you drawn up a summary of all the events?”

  “Yes,” I say, nodding.

  “Okay, let’s start from there, then.” And from that moment on we dive headlong into the work, re-emerging only two hours later exhausted, confused and dog tired. Two hours are only two hours, I know, but you have to add them to the six spent in the offices of The Chronicle, the two on the catwalk and the one and a half hours of make-up and hair. And that’s without mentioning what we’ve managed to do in so little time. For two workaholics like us, two hours can mean thinking up, defining and creating a project. No kidding. This is one of the things that we do have in common, and one of the things I admire most about him. He’s an amazing journalist and an amazing deputy editor. Everyone trusts Dave, and everyone knows that if there’s a problem, you talk to Dave. I would really like to be able to earn a crumb of his respect because that would mean that I’m worth something too. And I know it’s sometimes really exhausting, but working with him is great. Of course, maybe not tonight, because the watchword for tonight was obviously let’s squeeze Sam until the pips squeak. He has completely worn me out. He wanted to check through all the backlog of work, make appointments, re-organise the reporters shifts for the press conferences and arrange the list of guests to be sent to photographers attending the event. And this is because while we are at the Fashion Week, The Chronicle will continue with its usual routine and will have to do without us. I repeat, time obeys different rules if the person managing it happens to be Dave. As each of my sore vertebrae can testify. The only positive note is that I have stopped acting like a high school girl with her first crush. Checking through all that stuff ended up absorbing my existential worries about how well my mascara would hold up, so after a while I relaxed and started to behave as if it really was just work and that this wasn’t his bachelor pad but some room in the office that I’d just never seen before.

  “Hmmmmmm…” I moan, massaging my neck. He raises his face from the agenda he is noting everything down on and silently turns to look at me, putting one elbow on the back of the couch.

  “Tired?”

  “A little,” I admit, trying to maintain a slightly less relaxed position than him.

  He looks at his watch. “It’s past eleven. Can you keep going for a little longer?” he asks me in a distracted tone. “Because I would like to talk about your notes on Adam Graham. The man behind Beautiful Curvy. Tomorrow we’ve got the opening night of Fashion Week and that’ll keep us busy until late, so I don’t want to leave anything undone. How’s the article going? Have you already started working on it?”

  Shoot, it’s true! How could I have forgotten about it? Time has just flown by and tomorrow it’s the start of San Francisco Fashion Week, one of the most important events of the season. What with all the celebrities who are going to be in town, the next few days are going to be totally frantic and not only have I not started the article, I haven’t even got a damn dress to wear!

  “So?” he presses me, in the face of my sudden silence.

  “Er… well… yeah, of course I’ve started. Of course. I haven’t … I still haven’t finished because I wanted to follow the selections, but for the most part… in the sense… the outline…”

  My rambling obviously sets alarm bells ringing. “Are you sure you’re going to manage to do it? I talked to Margaret about it, too. She wasn’t totally wrong, because there are a ton of girls waiting for the results. We thought we’d devote a bit more space to it, but I want the article on my desk in time for the final,” he says, leaving me to imagine that if something goes wrong it won’t just be him who wants me out on my ass in double-quick time.

  “Yes, I think I can do it. I’ll sort it out over the next few days,” I mutter and put my hands on my knees.

  “Okay. How about a little break?” he suggests.

  “Sure.”

  “You want something to drink?”

  “I don’t know… what have you got?”

  Dave gets up, goes over to his bar and looks through the bottles, checking the labels. “I don’t know, let me see…” He lists them loudly: “Gin, rum, whiskey…” He puts his hand into a cupboard. “There’s even some beer. Brian must have left it here.”

  “I’d say beer’s fine.”

  “Yes, I think so too,” he says. He pulls a couple out, opens them and brings them over. “There you go,” he says, passing me one and sitting back down. Only, when it’s him deciding where to sit, he doesn’t worry about where like I do, and so ends up dropping down right next to me. Right next to me, with one hand resting casually on the back of the couch behind my back and the other holding a freshly opened bottle of beer.

  “Too much?”

  “What?” I whisper softly, too distracted by his scent to understand what he is talking about.

  “Am I too close?”

  “No, of course not, what are you talking about?” I sa
y, struggling to smile, but I think I’ve gone purple. Yup. My face is almost certainly somewhere between dark plum and deep violet.

  “I don’t know…” he says, gazing at me with curiosity. “You’ve been hiding behind the cushions all night. I thought you were trying to avoid me.”

  He looks relaxed, perfectly comfortable. Not like me. Not at all. I am curled up in my shell, twisting the hem of my dress between my fingers.

  “No, no, really…” I say. “Honestly, I hadn’t even noticed,” and to escape from my awkwardness, I dive into my bottle of frozen Bud. Unfortunately, Dave doesn’t stop looking at me – he seems terribly interested in the variations of expression that flit across my face, so to distract myself I look around for something to talk about. Anything to fill the silence. “That’s cute, what is it?” I say, taking a wooden statuette from the table by the couch. “I like ethnic ornaments,” he says, smiling enthusiastically until I turn it over in my hands and realise that the thing sticking out at the bottom isn’t a fishing rod. “Ah…” Of all the things I would have expected to find in Dave’s apartment, this was for sure at the bottom of the list and I can’t imagine a single reason why someone would spend a thousand dollars to display it in their living room. “It’s very… very unusual,” I stammer, not quite knowing where to look. I try to put it back where it was, but in my embarrassment I fumble and it falls to the floor, followed an instant later by the still full bottle of beer.

  “Oh my god, I’m so sorry…” I drop to my knees to pick everything up. “Oh just look at the mess I’ve made. Dave, I’m so sorry. Maybe if we have it cleaned? I’ll pay for it, don’t worry. I’m certain that…”

  “Sam…”

  God, can I really be this damn clumsy? Two hours – all I had to do was last two hours, and I’ve managed to ruin the upholstery, break the ashtray and…

  I pick up the sculpture and look at it. “Oh…”

  And as if that were not enough, I’ve also… broken the ethnic statue.

  “I’m such a disaster, I’m so sorry,” I murmur in mortification, dabbing at the stain with a handkerchief. “I’m so sorry, really, I didn’t mean to,” I whimper as I wonder how much all this is going to cost me. I have no idea, but everything here looks so damn expensive.